by Jayne Blue
Toby made a big show out of cracking his knuckles as he stepped forward.
“Hey, come on, man,” the guy said. “This is just a huge misunderstanding. I’ve got money. Let me reach into my back pocket. Real slow. Hell, you can do it. I’ve got a hundred bucks. You can have it. You can have my watch. It’s real!”
Axle set his jaw to the side. This idiot was hardly worth the trouble.
“A whole hundred bucks, huh?” Axle said. He lifted the guy’s wrist and turned it, pretending to admire the watch. Then he dropped it and stepped back. He spat on the ground near the guy’s feet and made a sweeping gesture with his hand, clearing the way for Toby and Machop.
“Stop!” A female voice echoed across the street. “For God’s sake! Stop it right now!”
She came rushing toward us, strands of platinum blonde hair flying out from beneath a blue baseball cap. She wore a white silk blouse that didn’t hide much as her ample tits jiggled as she hit a full run. Her skintight jeans hugged her in all the right places as she teetered on four-inch red heels. They matched the purse and looked expensive. Just like the rest of her, except for the ball cap. My gut told me that had been her idiot companion’s idea of some half-assed disguise.
She had the sense to stop on the sidewalk rather than march straight into the alley. It put her right under the street lamp and my heart stopped when I got a good look at her. She was stunning, with smooth, white skin and heart-shaped lips parted in a little “o.” Her breasts heaved with exertion and her skin flushed pink from the column of her throat right up to her high cheekbones.
Hands down, she was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen.
“Holy shit!” Toby said. He took two staggering steps backward and put his hand over his heart as if he were about to pass out from shock.
The girl looked from Toby back to her polo-shirt boyfriend. “Noel,” she said. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
Noel. Yeah. Come to think of it. He looked exactly like a Noel.
Toby recovered enough to put his hand out to her like he wanted her to shake it. He had his other hand on top of his head as if he were afraid it would pop off.
“What the fuck is going on?” Axle muttered to me.
I gave him a shrug then crossed my arms in front of myself, enjoying how this might play out.
“You look just like ... I mean ... are you …” Toby stammered.
Noel took the opportunity to move out of the alley and made a grand gesture of standing a little in front of his girl. He grabbed her arm in a way that got my back up. He pulled her back into the street.
“She’s not,” he said. “She’s ... with me. And we’re leaving. I’m sorry if I did anything to offend you.”
“Get the fuck out of here,” Axle said, sighing. “And, honey, get your man to take you someplace nice next time.”
“My ... he ... we aren’t …”
“Quinn Larsen!” Toby finally found his voice again. It came out as a high-pitched squeal. I’d never heard him make that kind of noise before. His jaw dropped and he pointed to the girl. “Quinn Larsen! Guys ... she’s ... she’s Quinn Larsen!” I didn’t think it possible, but his voice went even higher on the last syllable.
“Come on!” Noel said, jerking her hard enough she almost lost her balance. But she gave a weak smile and a wave as he pulled her across the street and back toward the parking lot.
He had a black Camaro parked at a meter. His alarm bleeped as he fumbled for his keys. The girl walked backward but kept her eyes locked with me. My damn heart tripped a little. Then she opened the passenger door and slipped inside.
Noel squealed the tires as he pulled away from the curb even before she shut her door.
“What. The. Fuck. Was. That?” Zig said, stepping off the curb. Toby hadn’t yet recovered. He kept muttering the name Quinn over and over again until Axle slapped him hard on the back.
“Come on,” Axle said. “I think we’ve had enough fun for one night.”
I agreed. Still, my blood heated as the intensity of that girl’s gaze stayed with me like the after-image you get from staring at the sun.
Chapter 2
Quinn
I should have offered to drive. As it was, if Noel hadn’t white-knuckled the steering wheel, I think he might have shaken himself to death. He took the Port Azrael Bridge at nearly ninety miles an hour, weaving in and out of traffic.
“Will you slow down!” I shouted, bracing myself against the dashboard as he whipped back into the passing lane. A barrage of angry horns followed us.
He kept checking the rearview mirror, scared of what, I wasn’t sure. “What the hell happened back there?” I asked, peeling a lock of hair away from my face where it stuck to my forehead. I tossed the baseball cap into the backseat. It hadn’t kept that kid in the alley from recognizing me anyway. The cap was another of Noel’s increasingly stupid ideas. Or maybe I was the really stupid one for going along with it.
“Just relax,” he said. I bit my lip past the urge to remind him to take his own advice. I still didn’t quite understand what he’d done to piss off an entire biker gang in the time it took me to go to the bathroom.
“There’s nobody back there, Noel,” I said, turning my head. The most threatening thing following us was a yellow Honda. The driver flipped me the bird as we made eye contact. I shrugged and pointed to Noel before I turned and faced forward.
“I’m serious,” I said, pressing my back hard against the seat. “You’re going to get in an accident. I don’t need that kind of hassle. If I could go one week without being in some bullshit tabloid story, that would be terrific.”
Noel let up on the accelerator. When we finally left the city limits of Port Azrael, he gave an audible sigh. He took the exit into Corpus Christi and actually cracked a smile. “Don’t be so quick to stay out of the headlines, Quinn. You know what they say about there being no such thing as bad press.”
“Wake up and smell the twenty-first century, my friend. That’s complete bullshit and you know it. Especially now.”
I didn’t feel like going into this with him again. The whole reason I was even in this car or this town with Noel Ransom was to change the trajectory of my career. Though Noel himself was maybe only two steps above being a complete idiot, they were important steps. His uncle was also one of the most influential movie producers in the industry. This project was supposed to help me change my image and get important people to take me seriously.
Noel tapped his ring against the steering wheel and sucked his bottom lip. I knew what was coming next. Now that he wasn’t scared shitless he’d start expounding on his own over-inflated sense of importance.
“Did you see that big guy?” he asked. “The one with the dark eyes?”
“You mean the one who had your Adam’s apple in his fist?” I said, giving him a wry smile. I had to be careful though. Noel’s deep-seated insecurities made him quick to anger. Though he didn’t have the power to throw me off this project, he had just enough to make things exceedingly miserable while I worked on it.
“I got his picture on my phone,” Noel said. “Couldn’t you just see somebody like Lamar Brock killing it in a role like that?”
I swallowed hard. Sure, Lamar Brock was amazing at what he did. But the public saw him as an action hero, not a serious actor. Of course, I knew how hard it really was for him to pull off what he did on screen and respected the hell out of him for it. But image was everything and his was exactly the kind I was trying to move away from. I was taking my first steps behind the camera. The working title of this project was The Club. The early draft of the script was amazing. Real. Rough. A fictionalized story of an outlaw biker based in Monterrey, trying to go legitimate. It was like The Godfather but on Harleys. I’d fallen in love with it immediately.
“Sure,” I said. “But what do you mean, you took his picture?” My chest tightened as I realized with cold clarity exactly what Noel had done to nearly get his ass kicked back at Woody’s Bar.
I let out a hard sigh. “Noel, I thought the plan was not to call attention to ourselves. Observe, don’t engage. That was really dumb, okay? I’m sorry to have to be so blunt. But those guys aren’t lions at the zoo. They’re people. Real, rough, dangerous people. No wonder they dragged you out into that alley.”
I wanted to say a hell of a lot more. Noel could thump his chest all he wanted, but there was no telling what would have happened if I hadn’t walked out of that place when I did. For once, my fame had come in handy. If that biker kid hadn’t recognized me, Noel was on track to get his face bashed in. He would have deserved it. I was used to people taking my picture without asking. It was part of the job. But those guys?
Noel went off on a rant. I stopped listening after about a minute. It wouldn’t do any good for me to interject anyway. He was already revising his memory of what happened back there. No doubt, he’d tell a story to his uncle wildly separated from fact. As he droned on, an uneasy feeling snaked through me. Noel Ransom was made up of sixty-five percent bullshit. And yet, here I was, relying on him to help me get this project off the ground.
He pulled into the valet parking circle in front of our hotel in downtown Corpus Christi. It was a beautiful, upscale high-rise overlooking the crystalline bay. Just over the water, I could make out the Port Azrael bridge on the other side of the bay. In just one evening, I got a taste of how different these two towns really were. Corpus Christi had all the glitter and glamor of a Gulf Coast tourist town. Business was thriving. But across the bay in Port Azrael, or “Port Az,” as I was learning the locals called it, things were vastly different.
Port Azrael enjoyed a recent regrowth. When we drove in off the bridge, many of the downtown buildings were covered in scaffolding. According to the Chamber of Commerce website, the town was enjoying gentrification as new businesses poured in, looking for access to the Gulf without the high rent and cost of living of Corpus Christi. Though no one would come out and say it, the Dark Saints M.C. was rumored to have something to do with all of that. My research said they ran the town. It was a true deal with the devil as far as I could tell. They were the bad boys, but they kept even worse things at bay.
“Did you hear a word I said, Quinn?” Noel asked. We stood in the lobby. Noel waved his hand in front of my face.
“What? Uh. Right. Sure. You want to do some location scouting tomorrow.”
“Sure,” he said, shaking his head. “Sleep in, if you want. I’m going to see what else I can find out about the club’s main hangouts. I might even drive by their clubhouse off the highway.”
I readjusted my purse strap on my shoulder. We were starting to draw stares from a few of the night owls heading up to their rooms. A couple near the grand staircase actually stopped and pointed. The woman’s face lit up and she whipped out her cell phone and started to walk toward us.
“Noel,” I said. “We can talk about this in the morning. I think we need to be a little more subtle. I don’t want to risk pissing those bikers off more than you already have. What do you plan on doing if they find a way to run you out of town?”
“Run me out of town?” he said, jabbing his finger into his chest. “I don’t give two shits about how tough they think they are. My family name is Ransom. I can buy and sell every one of those thugs, and their grandparents too.”
The hate in his tone dripped like oil. It shocked me. It underscored every doubt I had about Noel’s involvement in this project. He had no respect for the subject matter. It was in me to argue with him. But the couple from the lobby interrupted us. The wife had a big smile on her face. The husband at least looked a little sheepish and tried to pull her back when she reached out and grabbed my arm.
“I’m so sorry,” she said, gushing. “Are you Quinn Larsen?” She practically shouted it and my heart raced. I smiled and looked quickly around. There were a few other people near the front desk who heard her and turned to watch the scene unfold. Mercifully, they seemed to understand boundaries a little better than this woman. I knew she was harmless and again, this was part of my job. I’d been doing it since I was ten years old.
“Hi,” I said, finding a smile. They were young, mid-twenties, probably here on their honeymoon as their accents were pure mid-western and she wore a huge, shiny rock on her left hand that seemed like it was still a novelty, the way she gestured. She had a mass of dark curls gathered into a tight ponytail. Her husband wore a golf shirt and khakis. He stuffed his hands in his pockets, or tried to but his wife waved her cell phone at him.
“Do you mind?” she asked. Her husband had already raised the phone and held it horizontal, ready to snap a picture. I stifled a laugh. She hadn’t even asked if he could be in the picture too. I wanted to say no, aware of exactly what would happen in the next five minutes. She’d post the picture on social media, tagging our location. I could expect paparazzi here within the hour.
Noel looked pissed. His face turned a little purple. There was no help for any of it. I brightened my smile and touched my forehead to hers as her husband took a burst of pictures.
“Thank you so much,” she gushed and I melted a little. She was sweet. Truly. A fan. “I just loved you in Night Terrors Three. It was my absolute favorite of the franchise. They really should have given you more to do. You’re so much more talented than people give you credit for. I hope you know your true fans see that.”
I kept on smiling, used to these kinds of backhanded compliments. I just wished I hadn’t been wearing that baseball cap for the better part of the evening. Her Instagram photo of me without make-up was bound to end up on some online tabloid website, accusing me of doing drugs or having a nervous breakdown.
“Thank you,” I said. “Enjoy the rest of your vacation.”
Her husband had the good sense to grab the woman as she kept on about how underutilized I’d been in the last seven movies she’d seen me in. Noel just stood there with his hands folded.
“Come on,” I said. “I’m done for the night.” I didn’t wait for him as I headed for the V.I.P. elevators that would take me up to my penthouse suite. The studio paid for it. Noel had the suite below me. I knew it chafed him, but I was done trying to keep him happy for one night.
When the elevator doors closed, I saw him heading over to the front desk and my stomach dropped. I just prayed he wasn’t trying to set up some scheme even dumber than the one I let him drag me into at Woody’s Bar.
Chapter 3
Quinn
I made it through a fitful night of sleep after ignoring a couple of dozen texts and calls from my agent. She wanted an answer about six different projects she’d sent my way. A couple of them were lead roles in movies I knew would make us both a ton of cash. Over the last three years, I’d made a sizable fortune for both of us playing the dumb blonde scream queen in the Night Terrors horror movie franchise. As much as it irked me when she said it, the woman in the lobby was spot on. I had more to offer than what I looked like.
Port Azrael was supposed to be my way to prove that. I owned the rights to the book The Club was based on. Over strong objections, my agency put me in touch with the Ransom Company, and they greenlit it on the condition that Noel served as a producer. For now, we were stuck with each other. But if I wasn’t careful, he’d ruin my plan to do some field research on the part I wanted to play.
After ignoring another barrage of texts and calls, I knocked on Noel’s door. When he didn’t answer, my heart sank. It meant he’d gone back to Port Azrael without me. With my luck, he’d have us both thrown out of town before nightfall.
“Can I help you, miss?” One of the white-gloved el
evator attendants had come down the hall when he saw me. A slight blush colored his cheeks and it warmed my heart.
“Mr. Ransom,” I said. “Can you find out where he might have gone? He rented his own car, but maybe he called for a driver this morning anyway.”
The attendant blushed even deeper. His name tag said Felix. “I’ll see what I can find out. Would you like to wait in your suite?”
“What? Oh. No. I’ll head down to the lobby if the coast is clear.” God bless him, he didn’t ask me what I meant. If my picture got plastered all over Instagram after my run-in with fans last night, it might not be safe to go down there.
He pulled out a walkie and turned away from me to speak into it. After a moment, he turned back and smiled. “It’s quiet down there,” he said. “Do you want me to send a car for you? It sounds like your friend left early. He asked for directions to an address in Port Azrael. I’m going to confirm I heard it right. Because that place is ... um ... well …”
I put up a hand. “Let me guess, Mr. Ransom wanted to drive by the Dark Saints M.C. clubhouse. Is that right, Felix?”
“Um. Yes. It’s not a place I recommend you or anyone goes to.”
“Of course not, Felix. I understand. Don’t worry about it. So Mr. Ransom took his rental?”
“Yes. It appears he did.”
“Okay. I’ll tell you what. Can you arrange a car for me? I’d like to drive myself.”
“Miss Larsen, why don’t you let me get a driver for you? If you’re planning on following your friend out to ... Well, I just don’t think …”
“Relax, Felix,” I said. Though I was slightly irritated to be treated like a child, I knew it stemmed more from good old-fashioned chivalry, which I could appreciate. “I’m not going where Mr. Ransom is going. And I really would like my own car. I’m not in the mood for small talk today.” I gave him a genuine smile and Felix got the hint. He was fantastic at his job and within fifteen minutes, he’d secured a Ford Edge for me at my request. I wanted something simple, dependable, not flashy. I took the keys and headed out of Corpus Christi and back to Port Azrael.
